The risk of developing blood clots from Covid-19 is greater than the apparent chance of developing them from Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Purvi Parikh Tuesday to CNBC.
Parikh, a New York-based allergist and immunologist, has worked as a researcher for other Covid vaccine studies, including Pfizer.
Looking at Tuesday’s FDA recommendation to interrupt use of J & J’s one-time vaccine through that prism, Parikh said the temporary shutdown indicates that regulators’ “safety checks and balances are working.”
“For now, I would be cautious about all these conspiracy theories and panic again,” said Parikh, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
“You are much more likely to be coagulated by the real Covid-19 virus, which is about 1 in 20 people who are hospitalized or even 1 in 100 who recover at home. That’s much more likely,” she added. to “Squawk on the Street”, citing data from industry group Thrombosis Canada.
Parikh’s comments came hours after the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked states to temporarily stop giving J & J’s vaccine after six women in the US who received it developed a rare but serious blood clotting disorder. One of the recipients died, and another is in critical condition.
Nearly 7 million people have received the J&J recording. There are no known cases other than the six reported by federal health regulators. The J&J vaccine uses an adenovirus delivery system. An adenovirus is a common type of virus that usually causes mild cold symptoms.
When asked if J & J’s vaccine could still be given to Americans while investigating the six known cases of blood clots, Parikh said it’s best to stop them for now.
“They’re not revoking the emergency use permit. They’re not saying it’s a bad vaccine. Breaks are perfectly normal,” she explained. “As we vaccinate more people – millions versus tens of thousands in the clinical trials – these pauses will occur. I think this is the right move, that way we know for sure it’s safe to proceed.”
However, Parikh said that when we look at “the big picture” based on currently available information, “the benefits still far outweigh the risks of this vaccination.”
The White House’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told reporters on Tuesday that there have been no “red flag signals” from Pfizer’s or Moderna’s dual vaccines. Those two vaccines, the only others approved in the US for emergency use, use a new approach to vaccines that uses genetic material to elicit an immune response.